The Winners: Donna and W.C. Martin

The most inspiring people of the year 2000

The eleven-year-old girl is soft-spoken and almost shy. She's in sixth grade, she says, and she likes English, reading and art best of all. She enjoys coloring and doing crafts. Her favorite Christmas present was a pair of warm, black boots. "Before you came to your new home, were you in foster care?" I ask.

"No, ma'am," she says softly. "I was in a mental hospital. Because I was hurting myself."

The home from which she was removed was one of abuse and pain. When asked how her new family is different, she replies without hesitation, "They love me."

Terri is one of the 70 children who have been removed from the rolls of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services by the 200-member Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in tiny Possum Trot, Texas.

According to her new father, Rev. W. C. Martin, the congregation isn't just trying to save souls. "We're saving a generation," he says.

They are taking their job seriously. Back in 1997, W.C.'s wife Donna was praying for an end to the grief she felt over the death of her beloved mother, Murtha Cartwright. The unexpected answer to her prayer was one word: Foster.

Donna talked her sister Diann into going with her to take state-run classes that license foster parents who care for children who have been removed from their homes while the courts determines if they can be returned to their biological parents or if they should be released for adoption. Before long, Donna heard of two children, Tyler and Mercedes, in need of a home. Their mother, a crack addict, had been murdered. They had been in nine foster homes in one year and had been branded "too tough to handle." At the time, they were three and five years old.

"When they arrived," W.C. explains, "they were fidgety and jittery and couldn't be still. They were terrified they were going to be beaten, and sure there wasn't going to be enough food."

The therapy they immediately received? Hugs and more hugs. "These children had to realize they aren't a mishap. They are wanted and needed and loved. We let them know how important they are to the body of Christ. We give them love, morals and values. I won't kid you. There are rough days, difficult days. But these kids now have a different perspective. And they have joy. When you see them in church on Sunday, they are joyful!"

According to mom Donna, when other church members saw the glow of satisfaction that she and W.C. experienced, they were eager to know how to foster, too. She called Judy Bowman, a supervisor in the foster program. Judy told them that if they could get ten families to sign up for the class that they could come to Possum Trot instead of the families having to make the 120-mile round trip to Dallas. "We say that to a lot of people," Bowman says, "But ten families is a lot." Not for Bennett Chapel. "When we got there, they had twenty-three families. The folks who came to us from Bennett Chapel were of all types. Many were single. Many worked long hours in factories or the logging industry. Many were struggling to make ends meet. But they were resolute. Of those initial twenty-three families, we have placed children with eighteen!"

Bowman was to discover that for the small church, this was only the beginning. At last count, forty-two families have been licensed through classes at Bennett Chapel and 70 children have been placed with them in foster care. More important, over 60 have been adopted thus far, a percentage unheard of with such difficult-to-place children. All of the children have backgrounds of abuse or neglect that have caused them to be removed from their biological parents. Statistically, 85 percent of such children have been sexually abused, and significantly more than 50 percent come from situations of drug use. Many of these children have multiple siblings who the families of Bennett Chapel are adopting together.

Teresa Lathern had thought about adopting after the doctor told her and her husband that their one biological child would likely be their only, but found private adoption to be too expensive. "Then Donna Martin called and asked if I'd consider state adoption. She said she thought I'd be good at it."

Not long after she and her husband were licensed, Teresa got a call. There were five sisters in need of a home.

"All my husband said was, 'Five girls? Five girls?'"

But she had them come over for a visit and after he saw their little faces he couldn't turn them away. "We knew they were ours."

The girls did not come without emotional baggage. They had been severely neglected.

"They'd gone days without food," Teresa discovered, "so when they sat down to eat they gobbled their food, and they were immediately fearful about whether there would be a next meal. For months, after they went to bed, I'd find that they were hoarding food, stashing 'snacks' under their pillows."

"It isn't easy to take this kind of child into your life," says Bowman, who has worked in Child Protective Services for 26 years. She goes on to explain that in situations of neglect, one of the older children is forced to assume the role of parent. That child will often subconsciously try to sabotage a new family situation because she sees her role being "usurped" by the new parent. This happened with one of the Lathern children-a little seven-year-old girl who had been the "mom." In this case, Teresa was helped by her own sister who took the little girl for a while, gave her special attention and helped teach her that she could just relax and be a child.

The church and the Martins have, in effect, set up a support network for the kids. "The Martins are like the godparents of all these children," says Judy Bowman. If a parent is temporarily overwhelmed, Donna and W.C. will turn up on their doorstep to take the children for a few days to give the parents a little breather from the constant demands of a large, new family. And the other families are following their lead. They swap babysitting and advice that they get in their respective counseling sessions. The children play together and are tutored together. It's not like there's one child among them with a 'secret, shameful past.' They all come from difficult backgrounds; it's discussed and dealt with. "Sometimes if a single family takes in a child from a difficult background, their extended family thinks they are heroic but misguided. When that child starts to act out, the extended family pulls away. At Bennett Chapel, when a child acts out, everyone understands. They deal with the heart of the problem instead of just the behavior," explains Bowman.